After Innocence
by washed away again
Summary: Takes place Season 2, after Surprise/Innocence, and will continue through Season 2. Faithful to canon, inserted thoughts and scenes.
1. Chapter 1

**AN: Takes place Season 2, after Innocence. Don't own the characters, ideas, or story, just this specific bit of emotional angst. **

Wow. So that was it. That's how my big love story ended. Instead of kissing a frog and it turning into a prince, I kiss a frog and it turns into an evil serial killing demon. I should have known this is where my life would have gone. All the signs were right there and I just blew right past 'em. I believed in Angel. I believed in something safe, and good. I believed I deserved something good, something better than the hand I'd been dealt.

It was so perfect. I had never felt more ready, more beautiful, more desired. He was so gentle. I felt bad that I didn't look into his eyes the first time, but I was so overwhelmed with him inside me, above me, his arms wrapping around me and pulling me up towards him. I couldn't keep my eyes open. But after he finished, and to be honest, I wasn't entirely sure when that was, or I didn't exactly notice, he carefully rolled off me and then lay on his side, looking at me. And then I looked into his eyes, and they had never been darker, deeper, more mysterious and more unfathomable, and yet never more loving. I could see myself, how I looked right then, in his eyes. And I was a goddess in his eyes and for a second, I saw myself that way. He lazily ran his fingers up and down my sides, down my sternum, over my belly. It was amazing how natural, how comfortable that felt, to be completely naked lying beside him. It felt as if it were the hundredth time we'd lain like this, rather than the first.

I'm forcing myself to remember these things because these things were, ARE, real. Angel still exists somehow, somewhere. I have to believe that Angel died, and his soul, like the souls of the dead, is lost right now, but that I will see it, and know it, again. I have to believe that Angelus is not in any way my Angel. That I did not sleep with a monster. That I didn't lose my virginity and go to sleep with a monster, even though I woke up next to one (metaphorically speaking, since technically Angel-I mean Angelus, God I have to get that through my head!-was gone when I woke up).

It's funny how I'd always imagined all kinds of things about the first time I'd have sex. I don't mean I sat around thinking or wondering about it, but every so often, you wonder, the who, the where, the why, the how, THE WHEN. And again THE WHO. And of course, vampire, vampire's apartment, because we're probably going to die tomorrow, out of total love, January 19, 1998 was not exactly what I'd imagined.

But for all this imagining about the night, I'd never thought about the morning. I'd never thought about waking up next to him, whether it would be my place or his, whether I'd spend the night, would it be fast and quick somewhere like a car where we'd just go our separate ways, whether we'd get mochas in the morning, etc. Everything about my 17th birthday with Angel was everything I'd ever imagined plus so much more (the vampire part being especially in the 'more' category). And while I'd never imagined the morning or the next day, this morning, and today, and now tonight, have been the worst of my life.

If you haven't lived it I don't think you can imagine the kind of horror when the realization sets in. That someone you loved so profoundly is so completely not what you had thought. When something so perfect, so real, becomes so incredibly wrong. You feel poisoned inside. Hearing Angel say those words, and touch me like that, and seeing his eyes, his all-wrong eyes, you feel sick knowing that he was inside you, his flesh, his fluid, his SOUL. You want to run but you can't run because the sickness, the wrongness is inside of you, you yourself are poisoned. You feel dirty on the inside and no running will fix that because you can't run from your own body, and the wrong, the evil, is inside of _you_ now, not just him.

Things will never be the same again. Not just because Angel, my Angel, is gone. But because a part of me is gone too. In English class we were talking about coming of age novels, and the progression of innocence to experience. I don't think I will ever understand what has happened to me. I don't think I will ever recover from this loss, from this betrayal, from this abandonment. I have never felt so alone. Because the one person I want to run to, my Angel, is the one I have to run from.


	2. Chapter 2

After Becoming Part II

There. It's done.

I did it.

I killed Angel.

I killed my lover.

I would have given anything for one more minute, one more second, to explain, maybe to let him sacrifice himself, do it for me, so it wouldn't be blood on my hands. He would have. He would have died for the world. He would have died for me. But I didn't have a second. I didn't have a Goddamn second to spare for him! When once we had hours and hours in which we did nothing but kiss, and talk, and look at each other, I didn't have a second to tell him I was sorry.

"I love you."

"Now close your eyes."

Angel. He was. I loved-I love. My body. I walked through the streets of Sunnydale. I didn't recognize a thing. It was like I had never seen the movie theatre, and the high school, and Restfield Cemetery before, like I was walking through someone else's dream. I told myself, "You killed him for this. For movie theatres, and the early morning garbage collectors, and schools for children. You killed him for the whole world." I told myself this but it didn't seem like a fair trade. At that moment I would have rather we'd all gone to Hell, I would have rather I had destroyed everything, just to have him here.

Stepping back into my room was like I walked into a shrine to Angel. Seeing everything for the first time, and for the last time as the Buffy I knew. The Buffy I had been. The Buffy that was dying even as she was efficiently rifling through her closet and drawers.

I thought if I could escape every reminder of him. I took only clothes he had never seen me in, my ugliest, oldest things that I would never have worn in front of him.

But my skin had to come with me. And my skin holds more memories of him than any of my clothes, than my room, than all of Sunnydale. Can't escape my skin, can't escape him. It's like a tattoo that you REALLY regret getting in Cabo.

I let the sunshine wash over my skin. Sunshine being Angel's enemy, I'm hoping it will wash away all traces of him. Hoping sunlight will burn his tattoo from me the way it would burn him to ashes. But then I dream of him in the sunlight with me, and I want to believe that he is in Heaven, not Hell, and is sending me these dreams. That reunited with his soul he found some redemption, some peace. And then the dream turns evil, as I watch myself stab him over and over again. Sometimes he forgives me, sometimes he condemns me. It doesn't matter. He dies either way. And I know he is in Hell.


	3. Chapter 3

If you love someone, let them go.


	4. Chapter 4

Today is the day. Today is the day I let go of Angel.


	5. Chapter 5

I saw the Forgotten Day. The day he erased. He erased it as if it belonged only to him, as if it didn't belong to both of us. I don't know how he thought I would never find out. I mean, we all know supernatural stuff has loopholes. And to me, the Powers that Be are the loopiest supernatural thing I've met. For all I know the Powers That Be purposefully kept it in my life chronology cause they knew I'd see it in my last moments, as an added little punishment for Angel. Of course the PTB couldn't have known my friends would drag me back, that probably threw a wrench in their plans.

I don't know how Angel gave up that day in the sun. Because watching it in my last few seconds of life, all I knew was that the love of my life had erased the best day of my life. And that he chose heroism and his own stupid ego, over me. He chose redemption of his soul over me. Even though I'm the reason he even got his soul back the second time. Then again I'm also the reason he lost his soul. I guess things have never been simple when it comes to me and Angel. But I know now that there's no going back.

I know now that he doesn't love me as much as I love him. Because I would give up being the Slayer in a heartbeat to be with him. I risked not only my own life, but also the lives of my friends and family in the hopes that Angelus could be turned back into Angel. And now I know he would choose superpowers over me. Sure, it's noble, and self-sacrificing and all those things I love about him, the reasons I fell in love with him. That's all great for humanity, but for me it really sucks. Cause I know he'll never be truly mine again.


End file.
